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Know your self (organisation)

TLDR: Self organisation isn’t something you can teach, it’s an inherent property of the team and system. Coach teams to make use of it using constraints and attractors. (if you want more of this kind of thing, sign up to my Substack where I'll be publishing in the future) The Problem   The idea of self organisation has become pretty commonplace in the agile world. I’m going to tell you about some of the origins of the concept in cybernetics and complex dynamical systems theory, and argue that  Self organisation means something more precise and different from how you may have thought of it. If we don’t understand that definition we will make mistakes that get in the way of our agile teams rather than helping them On an individual level, self organisation can be used as ‘get yourself organised’ in a kind of self helpy, ‘get your shit together’ kind of way. At the team level it often translates to ‘the team gets to choose how to work’. This usually comes with a value judgement ...
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A Little Bit of Knowledge...

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Why do our teams make the same mistakes over and over again?   Why do they fail to do the things they agree to in a retrospective? Why are some problems so hard to solve?   Why do so many of our best intentions not survive contact with reality?   I’m going to present an answer based in cognitive science that will give us a framing to be more effective leaders and team-mates. In the process I’ll introduce you to a framing which I’ve found pretty transformative for my own life, wisdom questing, and ability to create meaning. No big thing then.   Professor John Vervaeke (Cognitive Scientist at University of Toronto (He’s brilliant)) describes four different types of knowledge, Procedural, Propositional, Perspectival, and Participatory. Let’s dive into those. For each kind of knowledge I’ll give a basic introduction to how we acquire it and what happens when it goes wrong.   (if you want more of this kind of thing, sign up to my Substack where I'll be publishing in...
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Only Fools Rush In

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Creating wise teams will create g reat teams. This is the hypothesis I submit before you.  I'm going to ask and attempt to answer three questions in this article:  What is wisdom? What is a wise team?  Why would a wise team become a great agile team? Buckle up. Here's a photo of Socrates to get you started.  What is a wise team? Wisdom is ' the ability to contemplate and act productively using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight'.   Thanks Wikipedia. We know wisdom when we see it. Think of someone wise. What are the qualities you see in that person? At the very basic level as humans we have problems and we need solutions to those problems that a) achieve the goal and b) do it without lots of unintended consequences.  For example, if I want to make toast I have a few ways I can do it.  I could: a) burn your house down b) toast it with a candle  c) put it in the toaster d) use the iron  e) build a rocket to t...
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Send in the Clowns

Learning to clown will make you a better Scrum Master.  Ok that may or may not be true but I've just returned from a weird and wonderful 2 weeks of clown training* and I want to share some reflections on how that can help agilists everywhere with our work.  First some clarifications - clowning is a dramatic art, they teach it in drama schools . Don't be fooled, clowning is serious work. I invite you to put asides the stereotypes (wigs, big shoes, flowers that squirt water, riding a tiny bike and fitting many clowns into a tiny car) and consider what a clown is in their essence. Clowning is broader than just circus clowning, it includes deep emotional practices  and ritual .  BREAK:  (if you want more of this kind of thing, sign up to my Substack where I'll be publishing in the future) A clown take ordinary things and provides an extraordinary take on them. An  everyday item is no longer what you think it is, it's a toy to be explored. Everything is the obj...
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